Saving money as a method of change

I don't usually feel that savings should be the end all reason for changing how a school runs, but I do understand the pressure. I'm sure that we have all experienced situations where, at some point in our lives, we had to cut back on expenses to be successful (read not-fail). I'm sure that everyone has also had experience with the spend money to save money aspect also, such as when you buy a more efficient air conditioner or water heater that ends up saving enough to pay for itself after a few years. For many though, textbooks are sacrosanct elements of schools, after all textbooks in their current form have existed for centuries, and moving to a new format is a major paradigm shift for many. But, this shift seems to be a must change, as the world moves deeper into the information age, then to should the experiences be more authentic to the way that people will access information (beyond just school). Think about your own behaviors recently, when you needed to look something up, did you go to a library, find an encyclopedia or dictionary and look that thing up (and if you did was it current)? When you needed instruction on how to do something, did you buy a book or did you start with a search? So if for your own lifelong learning you look things up and read or watch online for answers, shouldn't we also be doing (modeling) that in the classroom. The nice thing to me is that the process of using updatable textbooks in a digital format with students, won't cost more to save in the long run, but can save right now. One device, multiple textbooks, current textbooks, after all who wants a science textbook that talks about Pluto as a planet, that human DNA will one day be mapped, or any number of other science aspects that have changed in just the last decade? So let's do get new book, books that are adaptable and interactive, and adapt teaching styles and strategies to take better advantage of this savings.

Ohio district saves $800,000 with move to e-textbooks
An Ohio school district plans to introduce electronic textbooks for sixth through 12th grades, replacing traditional textbooks and saving the district $800,000. The expansion, which follows a pilot program, will provide e-textbooks for subjects including math, language arts and foreign languages. Dayton Daily News (Ohio) (8/6)

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Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels. I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support...

Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text. These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted. The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be ...

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 8: Textbook structure

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle...

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